Romney vs. Santorum: Down to the wire in Michigan and Arizona

Nate Silver, who writes the FiveThirtyEight political blog at the New York Times, gives Romney a 2-to-1 chance of taking Michigan, and the InTrade prediction market makes it 5-to-1 in Michigan and nearly a total blowout in Arizona.

Romney also comes closer to beating Barack Obama in theoretical match-ups than does Santorum – which is why in some quarters he’s considered the more “electable.”

But in a race with no clear front-runner, a large portion of the GOP voting field still unexcited about their potential candidates, and an incumbent experiencing a bit of a comeback in the polls, Romney’s electability may be a bit wobbly.

“Conventional wisdom says that Mitt Romney is a more viable candidate than Rick Santorum in a head-to-head fight with President Obama,” writes David Bass in the conservative American Spectator. “But my sense is that the so-called Romney-Santorum electability divide underestimates one of Romney's biggest liabilities in the general election: His aura of being the guy who just fired you.”